i see you're in dfw area, so @Bhawkins and @k8tpayaso would be your most reliable sources of info for first-hand experience. Bob and k8t seem to be growing them hassle-free with zero-worries and zero attention to detail. All you really need to do, seemingly, are buy some trees, plant them in the sunniest spots in your yard with fairly good drainage, and wait..

a few cultivars may not be too productive, but many of the better varieties perform well and are precocious, often fruiting on the first year of planting or grafting.

feel free to post your queries, many here 'speak jujube', and so happy to share/broadcast data

@k8tpayaso told me about your Big Tex urban farm project being featured by your online newspaper. Congrats and more power to you, and like many others here, i would like to help. Jujus are undoubtedly tailored to your specifications, since jujus are "hearty and prolific,and their storage life is long". Just like spuds and 'nions

jujus' storage life is long because the fruits have a wide window of edibility. You can eat the fruits at the yellowish, creamy stage, when they have a vegetable quality, and may eat them when fruits have been dried, with no preservatives or artificial desiccation. Or course, you could eat the fruits at any stage in between the two extreme stages mentioned. Shelf-life from creamy stage to dried dates is 1 year, at a minimum! Much longer than a year if you have strong teeth, as the fruit sugars often crystallize into rock sugar. And speaking of long storage life, jujus also have some of the longest productive lives among deciduous trees. Jujus may be fruitful for hundreds of years. And may also be grown with zero pesticides in many areas all over the world, including usa.

and referring to what was mentioned by dallasnews article , saying that DFW area has been labeled a 'food desert' by the Dept of Agriculture- well, got to tell you that where we're at(las vegas), DFW is a little too moist in comparison We actually have the least amounts of rainfall per annum among big cities in usa(even less than phx, az),and our jujus are doing pretty good for the little rain they get and the half-hearted irrigation that we give them.

jujus also bear some of the most nutritious fruits one can grow in the usa(even holding its ground against tropical fruits being grown in fl, hawaii, and so cal) and expectedly, jujus also happen to have more antioxidant activity than conventional fruits. That study shows it is only second to Cornelian cherries, but could have been number 1 in the list if the experiment used unpeeled jujubes, instead of peeled ones. All the high scorers were not peeled.

wildscaper:

I'll do more research and ask a few questions for sure.

i obviously tried to predict what questions about jujus you have in mind, basing on your comments at the dallasnews article, and tried to answer them in advance

below are a couple of reputable webpages we refer to every now and then, since the gov't of australia updates them periodically. And lastly, you probably might want to start with seedlings since juju trees are a bit expensive(~40+dollars for a regular-sized bareroot) Probably just buy one named juju tree if you need some degree of instant gratification, and then just graft it and the seedlings with other named varieties at a later time.Will send you some pits from rootstoc/named varieties which have high germination rates. Just PM me your address when you're ready to give it a go

Man you are awesome! This is great. How generous! We have done a lot this year with this project but there is a lot more to do. Hopefully I don't ask too many questions but yes my interest in Juju's is primarily in regards to my project. I think there toughness and productivity could make them very useful. Thank you!

don't worry about asking many questions. Many here are more than happy to answer them-- again and again-- as newcomers to jujus trickle in at different times. You are not the first to ask questions, and likely not the last. Impossible for newcomers to try to sieve this entire forum and threads for what they feel might be questions that have already been answered.